Comment by hbosch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hbosch | Hacker News Reader

In fact, some quick research suggests that multiple Swiss watchmakers had engineered quick-change watch straps before Apple... but you can definitely credit Apple for bringing it to the everyday consumer. I found an article[0] that predates the first Apple watch which mentions Hublot, Panerai and Cartier as innovators here.

In fact, one of the coolest things about the Cartier Santos is not only the quick-release system that frees the band from the watch but the hidden buttons that also allow you to resize the steel bracelet itself[1]! (Video shows a 2018 Santos, but nevertheless)

Regardless of who got it right first, I do hope that Apple's watch strap system becomes more ubiquitous in the watch world. Oftentimes watches are over-engineered for their 99% use case of casual wear in order to fulfill some fantasy of diving in the Caribbean or scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro, and so therefore many are screwed or fastened in some way that makes adjusting them a pain without tiny little tools and a clean surface.

0. https://www.thewatchbox.com/blog/gone-60-seconds-quick-chang...

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWv4QBJyz78&t=103s

For what it's worth, scaling the freestanding Mt. Kilimanjaro volcano is about as intense as a 4 day backpacking trip up up up to high altitude, little to no watch-risky technical climbing required for the common routes.

Whiskey/cocacola routes take 7 days standard, at least in 2012 they both did. For good reasons, folks struggle with altitude and you have plenty of people who go up high first time in their lives, so taking time to acclimatize is smart for general groups. Even with this, success rate was not more than 50%.

I've personally struggled like hell on the top, almost hallucinated and so did rest of my team members. But we made a junior mistake of going too fast up on summit day. When I did ie Mont Damavand in Iran, which is just 250m lower after cca 3 years, no issues and roud trip was just 2 days. But I've trained and did some crazy stuff in between. Most folks don't do that kind of stuff.

Sure, but none of that is hard on watches.

I do hope that Apple's watch strap system becomes more ubiquitous in the watch world. Oftentimes watches are over-engineered for their 99% use case of casual wear in order to fulfill some fantasy of diving in the Caribbean or scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro, and so therefore many are screwed or fastened in some way that makes adjusting them a pain without tiny little tools and a clean surface.

I agree, but for different reasons. I have several very nice dress watches that I keep for sentimental reasons that I'm not able to wear because the manufacturer used one-off straps for them. The mechanisms still work fine, but I can't wear them because the exact strap for that exact watch is no longer available.

Hey, EU — While you're forcing USB-C on everyone, how about picking a watch band standard, too?

So, I'm a huge fan of regulation but the problem with over-regulation is that it will stop really fun products from being released in those markets.

Like, imagine a watch that has an inflatable cuff that can take your blood pressure. It may be unsightly, bulky, and very dorky. So maybe it wouldn't fit this new "EU Watch Band Standard" that was imagined for Apple Watch. So a very large company like Apple could lobby the EU to change the law and might even do that with enough lead time so it doesn't delay the product launch. But a small company, kickstarter, etc would be screwed because there's no way they could expect to get the legislators' attention for something like this.

And yes, the legislation could be written with sensible carveouts, but we all know it won't, or they'll either not be comprehensive enough, or they'll be a leaky sieve that lets every shady corporation say "oh yeah there's a standard watchband but our special watch falls under exemption 312(c)." Or you can have a government agency handle "exemption requests" without legislative action, but then the small kickstarter will go through 6 rounds and 18 months of records and documentation requests, if they even bother looking into the process at all and not just saying "oh fuck that."

> imagine

Yes, so imaginative innovations for niche usecases can easily be exempted. The goal would be to enable mainstream mass-market devices to follow the standard. It’s not as complicated as you suggest, and works in almost every industry.

I mean, straight up no. If there is any sort of legislation, regardless of exemptions, time will have to be spent to figure out if the exemption applies, and generally will require some work to either apply for or defend the exemption as part of the development and release process.

This would stifle innovation in the long run. Why bother with this extra work when there are a other variations on the idea that would be quicker to launch?

I rarely see this mentioned, but why don’t people just support laws that expire? You can’t stifle innovation in the long run if the law doesn’t exist in the long run.

I’ve often espoused a law that requires USB-C to charge phones- that expires after 3-5 years. Just enough time to get everyone on the same standard and lock in a little, but not enough to kill innovation when the next big thing happens.

Worst case scenario, wait 3 years… but if it was really bad, the law would get repealed anyways.

This strategy would be great for many fields. Imagine if the world decided to make a law that expires in 3-5 years to require one specific electric car charging port. Or made an expiring law that required ebook sellers to use epub format in 2010 (I’m looking at you, Amazon, with your .mobi format). Or made an expiring law that unified every display cable under HDMI (ignoring patent issues).

I’m not saying that stuff like this should be enshrined in law forever, but a lot of stuff would be a lot easier if it was more socially/politically accepted to pass laws that expire.

Because then laws that people rely on become bargaining chips held hostage when the expiration date comes. And this creates horrible perverse incentives where the more obviously good and uncontroversial the law is, the more valuable it is as a hostage, so the more likely it is to disappear, which is a complete inversion of democracy. Like clean air? Well, give $MY_FACTION a billion billion dollars or it goes away.

This isn't a hypothetical either, you see this in American politics all the damn time with temporary laws and allocations.

Every innovation is niche, until it gets adopted by the mainstream. Many large companies have attempted to create mainstream products which have failed.

You might not be able to get the exact strap, but there are certainly numerous aftermarket straps (from low to high end) you can easily get. The strap is more than likely held in by a spring bar, and the while there are various widths, they are standard widths, ie 20 or 22mm etc… especially any older mechanical watch, will absolutely have the ability to interchange the band. And if it’s not a spring bar but a solid fixed piece of metal, you can use a nato style strap or something similar.

You might not be able to get the exact strap, but there are certainly numerous aftermarket straps (from low to high end) you can easily get.

I've tried, and even brought them to several watch stores and jewelers in Seattle, Houston, and New York with no luck.

The problem isn't the spring bar, it's the shape of the watch where connection is made.

I'm curious, which very nice dress watch manufacturer won't replace the band for you? They went out of business?

> the exact strap for that exact watch is no longer available.

Also too many reaper* nicknames in the thread

You want at a standard watch band? Don't look at the EU, look at... NATO

Really

What the heck are people talking about with the quick swap bands being an innovation?

Literally all the watches I own, from grandfathers antiques, to modern Amazfits, all of them have the bands on a spring loaded bar. Like... I don't remember the last time I have seen a different mechanism.

There is a brief mention of this system as a "conventional" one in the article

```

Apple took the conventional spring bars of traditional watches, miniaturized them, turned them on their sides, and embedded them into the watch band.

```

Complicating a simple solution for the sake of a flashy "flush" finish, doesn't sound like an innovation.

I don't know about your grandfather's watches, but non-smart watches I've had that take standard bands require a screwdriver.

Rugged watches, outdooring ones, garmins, sure. They have big bars which require a screwdriver. They are made to first tear out your hand and then "maybe" break.

I think Garmin switched all of their watches to the QuickFit system at least 5 years ago.

Quickfit is mostly concentrated on their larger/higher end watches, like Fenix and up. Their lower end watches (like the Forerunner 265) still have a quick release spring bar.

In contrast, Casio G-Shocks, which are specifically built to be rugged/fashionable, don't have any kind of quick change mechanism. The strap is integrated into the case that further protects the watch.

> Quickfit is mostly concentrated on their larger/higher end watches, like Fenix and up. Their lower end watches (like the Forerunner 265) still have a quick release spring bar.

Ah, yeah. I was mostly addressing the "rugged watches" comment, but yes that's absolutely correct.

My Forerunner 245 took about 10 seconds to replace the strap and I did not need any tools. That's a 4+ year old budget watch.

The new thing seems to be attaching bands with bars that can be removed with a fingernail, rather than a tiny screwdriver or other pointy tool.

Also even cheap Casios had the feature to infinitely adjust the strap they GP is talking about.

By using a tool to push out the pins? That's not even remotely what GP is talking about. Look at their posted video to understand the difference.

Spring loaded with a button to move them easily to the side? Or spring loaded with the small rings to use a tool with?

My impression is that the button system did got more popular over the last years, but it certainly existed many years before. Hard to find sources though.

The spring bars are a pain. Many of my extended family don't have the finger dexterity to operate them at all, and either take them to the jewelry counter to replace or bring them to me. The rest can change them, but hate the damn things and take several tries sometimes with the bar flying across the room and complain about it every time.

This isn't change for the sake of change, it is a genuine improvement.

How often do people change their watch straps? I changed my strap exactly once, from original to easy adjustable magnetic. The quick change straps are 100% marketing ploy to sell more straps. Talking about 1st world problems...

Several times a day, for me. I have one band that I like for exercise, another for work (avoids inflaming carpel tunnel while typing) and a third for the aesthetics when walking around.

If the Apple bands were harder to switch I probably just wouldn’t wear a watch while working and exercising.

On my traditional watches? Almost never, because it's a pain.

On my Apple watches? Often! I wear a nicer strap in dressier situations, but always change to one of the rubber straps for exercise or swimming, and I do those things a LOT.

The Apple innovation here is pretty slick.

The spring loaded bars are not very quick to swap.

Are you talking about the spring bars that you need a tool to remove?

If your fingernail is the right size and you are willing to risk breaking it and impaling your fingertip and cracking the body of your watch with the leverage and the band isn't jammed to complicate the procedure, you can often make it work without tools.

Yeah, the swap button is a big improvement.

The spring bars are not a quick swap and they are not easy or painless. I have a small watch collection and a larger strap collection :P, but I'd never call it easy or convenient.

Now, there are some straps, even in budget category, that have a small lever that manipulates the spring and it's fairly easy to switch - but only if all your straps have the same mechanism. This is then compounded by different widths and types and whatnots.

As ever, Apple reaps the benefits (as well as drawbacks) of the basically single hardware device - you can build a massive ecosystem around a predictable, controlled, singular, homogeneous product line.

Or to put it other way - any one of my friends or family can and do change apple watch straps. 96% of them would be either unable or unwilling or both to change a regular strap. Even myself, I prefer the Nato straps on my regular watches as they are easier to swap than conventional straps.

As a fellow convert to the church of the nato strap this made me lookup the situation for the apple watch. Unfortunately a real contentious nato strap is incompatible with the watch due to it's wrist sensors. So you end up with two piece nylon straps calling themselves nato bands. I guess if you were fine being classified dead by your watch you could probably put a nato band on one.

The casio g-shock has a problem with nato bands as well. the g-shock has a laughably small band pin width(16 mm). so to get a nato strap(24 mm) on one you need a band width adapter. which undoes most of the advantage of the nato strap. I am not really sure why they made it so small. My mechanical engineering is a bit weak does a small pin have less side load than a large pin?

>but only if all your straps have the same mechanism.

You might choose to replace all your bands if you want to use only captive spring bar mechanisms, but you must replace them if you buy an Apple watch.

A captive spring bar with a lever solves the problem entirely, and in a way strictly superior to Apple's approach. It is smaller and cheaper than the Apple solution. It will work with any watch from any manufacturer. It will allow you to keep your old bands if you choose.

If you can think of any advantage Apple's system has, I am all ears.

>you can build a massive ecosystem around a predictable, controlled, singular, homogeneous product line

Spring bars are also entirely predictable, controlled, singular, and homogeneous. You can buy a band in any standard width and be confident it would fit any watch. We had a far larger ecosystem before the fruit companies got involved.

This gives the lie to Apple's supposed genius. "Tight integration" is completely unnecessary when there are standards. They just want a monopoly.

>Even myself, I prefer the Nato straps on my regular watches as they are easier to swap than conventional straps.

Completely incompatible with the Apple watch, of course.

Spring bars are NOT easy to work with. They’re easy to lose, hard to attach/remove, and definitely not quick.

The Apple Watch release buttons are much better - takes barely 5s to replace bands.

Additionally, it detaches the part that holds the band, allowing for deeper customisation. This is the thing you normally need screwdrivers for.

Watches are jewelry, and regardless of who did it first, making a reliable, easy-to-use flush strap system is an innovation. I'd argue it's less complex for the user, it's certainly easier to use.

I have mechanical watches and an Apple Watch...I swap bands on my Apple Watch almost every day because it takes about 5 seconds. I've swapped bands on my mechanicals maybe once this year, because it is super finicky, the spring bar always launches into another dimension and you spend 10 minutes feeling around on the floor to find it. All while you risk scratching the finish on your watch as you try to push back a tiny metal spring with a tiny metal pick. And that is if you have a springbar tool available, which is the best case scenario.

I suspect people are downvoting because they're imagining the older style of watch band spring bars. The older ones like this [1] require a tool, dexterity, and also some luck that it doesn't go flying across the room.

Bands with the newer style like this [2] can easily be done without tools or any stellar dexterity, but are still a bit more fiddly than how it seems Apple watches are. I'm betting this is the type you're talking about, as it's the only kind I've had to deal with across my ~decade of smartwatch use.

[1] https://www.bartonwatchbands.com/products/stainless-steel-sp...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B9FQ3PXF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

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